


Caring for a Baby with the Blues

by Pandora (paperclipbutterfly)



Series: Plot Bunnies and Rogue Foxes [4]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Bogo being Bogo, But also being Bogo Dad, Fluff and Humor, Gen, I was close though, Light Angst, No Angst, Slice of Life, haha just kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbutterfly/pseuds/Pandora
Summary: A carjacking incident leaves the ZPD officers to care for a little moose calf until her mother can come collect her. How hard can it possibly be?





	Caring for a Baby with the Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Well, as it turns out it's not exactly a walk in the park. ;)
> 
> A quiet plot bunny that bit hard and held on tight after an offhand comment someone made a few months ago about whether Bogo was good with kids. It was subsequently fed by LordKraus. I headcannon that Bogo may say he doesn't care a lot, but something he does care about is kids. Have a silly little scene in Precinct One as a few of the ZPD's finest try and calm a fussy baby. XD
> 
> Enjoy!

A city the size of Zootopia saw its fair share of vehicles driving in and through it. Vehicle-related crimes, as a result, were pretty common occurrences. Aside from the obvious moving violations and vandalism, the ZPD also did see the occasional carjacking cross their radios. Less often than that was the car recovered completely intact. Less often still was there a passenger for them to deal with.

The little passenger that had been abandoned in the backseat of today’s carjacking incident in Tundratown hadn’t stopped crying since they brought her to the station.

“Shhhh, baby, come on. No more tears.” Officer Francine Trunkaby shushed the baby she was bouncing gently between her arms and her trunk, a moose calf in a frilly yellow dress somewhere between six and nine months old. “I’m sure mama’s on her way right now, shhhh…”

Officer Nick Wilde stuck his head out from his workstation. “You really have to keep her in here, Frankie?”

“Where else am I supposed to go with her?” She shifted the calf to her shoulder and patted and rubbed her back. “The wolf pack is in the break room, so unless you want to deal with a crying baby _and_ a chorus of howling—”

He waved his paw. “Hard pass.” The fox’s head ducked back for a moment before all of him sauntered out from his cubicle and over to the elephant. He squinted appraisingly and said, “You’re holding her wrong.”

Francine shot him a heated glare. “I know how to hold a baby, Wilde.”

“Then why aren’t you doing it right?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Francine held the calf in front of her as she gave a particularly loud wail. “Why don’t you show me how it’s done, then?”

Nick’s peevish expression intensified. “Well, I _would_ , but since that child literally weighs more than I do—”

“Knock it off, you two.” Officer Nadine Fangmeyer walked in between them from the copier, shuffling a bunch of carbon copy pages in between standard stock paper ones as she went past to her own desk. “The mother will be here soon. Just put up with it until then.”

“Why don’t you give it a try, Stripes?” Nick suggested, words edged with a little ribbing. “It’ll be good practice for the new cub, eh?”

Nick smirked and waggled his eyebrows as the tiger turned and threw a dirty look his way. Her paw settled lightly over the little bump in her middle as she considered the challenge for a few seconds before setting the papers on her desk. Nadine walked behind her elephant coworker so she could see the calf’s face. She was still weeping pitifully, but slowed the snuffling as the tiger came around her peripheral view and stopped directly in front of her. For a moment, there was quiet.

Nadine gave her a cheerful, toothy smile. “Aww, there you go, sweetie, see? No reason to—”

“WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

The calf yowled, her cries now laced with genuine screams of terror, and she nearly threw herself out of Francine’s arms as Nadine jumped behind one of the cubicle walls. Having limited dexterity in her hooves, it was all the elephant could do to keep the little girl from falling to the floor. She caught her around the chest with her much more versatile trunk and let her thrash until she wore herself out, and held her sobbing once more.

Nick apparently found the whole spectacle about the funniest thing he’d seen all day.

“Hah! Now that’s a fight-or-flight response if I ever saw one.” He laughed and slapped his knee. “Ten-thousand years of evolution be damned!”

Nadine slipped low and out of sight from the baby back toward her desk.

“You’re a _jerk_ ,” she seethed at Nick as she slinked past him.

“Oh, come on, darlin’,” he said with a smug smirk and head tilt. “That was low-hanging comedy gold right there.”

A low whine interrupted his teasing as Officer Wolford walked into the office space, tail dragging low and ears pinned back. They flattened even further (apparently that was possible) as he entered the immediate vicinity of the crying calf. He put his paws over them to further block the sound as his face twisted up in visible discomfort.

“Okay, guys, I’ve got some updates on the situation here.” Wolford said, panting hard. “Good news is the perp that, ah… that jacked the car is in custody and the mother has been contacted. She’s on her way here right now.”

“Thank God,” Francine murmured in relief, again trying to soothe the baby with a gentle shushing. She waggled her ears in agitation. “Wait… good news? Does that mean there’s bad news?”

Wolford nodded and bit his lip hard. “She, uh… she’s stuck in the tunnel between Tundratown and, ah…” He sucked in a sharp breath. “… and Sahara Square. It’ll be another… forty minutes _at least_ before she gets here.”

“Oh, great,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Anything _else_?”

He nodded and pointed at the calf. “Yeah… her name is BellaaaaAAAAAAAAWOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Wolford lost the hard-fought battle and started into a rolling howl. He pawed at his ears and bit it back, then jetted out of the offices, muttering apologies under his breath as he abandoned them all to some quieter corner of the station.

Francine heaved a deep sigh and started rocking the calf in her arms again. “What are we going to do?”

Nick tucked his ears back. “She’s got to run out of steam at some point, right?”

As if in direct defiance of his statement, Bella’s wailing actually increased in volume and pitch. They all cringed, the immediate future before them bleak and filled with annoying agony.

“Maybe sing to her?” Nadine proposed. “A lullaby? All the books say babies like songs. Maybe she’ll sleep.”

Francine looked at the calf thoughtfully, and scratched at her head with her trunk. After half a minute of more crying, during which all of them winced hard multiple times, she opened her mouth and took the plunge with a very interesting choice of song.

“ _Baby miiiiiiiine, don’t you cryyyyyyyy. Baby miiiiiiiine, dry your eyyyyyyyyyyyyes…_ ”

Bella stopped for a couple of seconds not so much in happiness as in confusion and then outright disapproval. She cried even harder, and her cries were now accompanied by pained whines from Nick and Nadine alike.

“That one?!” Nick shouted over the renewed wails as he pulled his ears down. “ _That’s_ the song you choose? Really??”

“What??” Francine put the calf back over her shoulder so she could more easily see and glare at the fox. “My mother used to sing it to me when I was a kid!”

“I daresay she was probably actually successful at it, too!”

Nadine bared her teeth and growled, “Don’t you yell at her!” at the same time as Francine said angrily, “You know what, Wilde—?!”

“… okay, Frankie, so here’s the deal…”

Officer Judy Hopps wandered in just then, and they stopped with mouths still hanging open, eyes shooting daggers at each other in lieu of the explosive words left unsaid on their tongues. She made a beeline straight between all of them and stood at Francine’s feet, speaking matter-of factly and somehow paying no heed to the sound of the crying baby.

“Chuckles in holding is clammed up tight, and McHorn said that the public defender will probably be WHOA, WHAT THE—?!”

Nick lifted Judy from under her arms and held her up presentation-style, eagerly, as though attempting to appease a higher power.

“How about a fluffy bunny stuffie, Bella? Huh? Would that make you hap—oof!”

Judy back-kicked her heel into his gut in annoyance and he lost his grip. He folded forward slightly as the air went out from his lungs and she whirled on him.

“What’s the big idea, Nick?” she demanded.

“Sorry…” he wheezed and straightened himself back up by degrees, the spot just below his one eye twitching. “She’s… hitting this perfect pitch…” He pointed at the moose calf as she renewed her wail, taking her tone incrementally higher than it was just a few moments before. “… there! That’s the one. Like that. It’s like an icepick straight to my eardrums. I got desperate.”

“We’re all about there, I think,” Francine said soberly, and Nadine nodded.

Judy stared at them for a few seconds and then smirked in derision. “Wow. The ZPD’s finest reduced to whining children from a little crying? Who’s the baby here, exactly?”

Nick tugged at an ear and gestured at her crossly, less at the criticism and more at the fact that the rabbit seemed unaffected by the sounds the calf was making. “With those ears you should be begging for mercy, too. What gives?”

Judy waved her paw in dismissal. “Please… there’s been a new litter in my parents’ warren practically every year since I stopped making that kind of noise myself. You learn to put it in the background, or go crazy.”

“Well, since you’re such an expert, maybe _you_ can make her stop that ungodly fuss.”

Judy rolled her eyes, and turned to look at her two coworkers behind her. They just tucked their ears back with scrunched, pleading expressions on their faces. She snorted and regarded the still squirming child, then set her gaze aside at the enormous diaper bag that had been recovered from the car with her. She walked over to it, tugged the zipper down with both paws, and climbed inside.

“Diaper changed recently?” she called from within. Her voice accompanied sounds of rummaging about.

“Not since we found her, but I don’t think it’s dirty,” Francine said with a subtle sniff.

“We’d all have smelled it if it was,” Nick agreed, and wrinkled his nose with revulsion. “Thank heaven for small miracles.”

“She could just be upset that her mother’s not here, you know,” Judy said dryly.

“Don’t.” Nick dropped his voice low and said over the bag opening half in warning, “Don’t take our hope away from us.”

Judy pushed his muzzle out of her way and climbed back out of the bag.

“Well, aside from the obvious trauma of being in a strange place and separated from the one mammal she’s literally known since _birth_ , I’d put money on her being hungry.” She jerked a thumb at the opening she just stepped out of. “Since there are no extra bottles or formula in there, I’d wager an additional hedge bet on little Bella being fed the old-fashioned way. So, unless one of you happens to be a lactating cow, you’re just going to have to wait for her to tire herself out or her mother to get here, whichever comes first.”

“ _Is that any way to refer to one of our citizens, Hopps?_ ”

For a mammal who could bench press a hippo (he actually did once), Chief Bogo was surprisingly stealthy when he wanted to be. None of them knew when he’d entered the office area, but there he stood with his patented expression of mild authoritative irritation on his face. Judy turned and took an involuntary half-step back from him as her ears dropped limp behind her.

“Chief Bogo, sir, I… I certainly didn’t mean…” she stammered, and then gulped. “Only as a strictly zoological term—”

“Save it.” He crossed his arms over his puffed-out chest as he scanned the other mammals present with critical eyes. They settled on the little bundle of noise in Francine’s arms. “Would someone mind telling me why there’s a baby in my station?”

The elephant gave a quick summary of the open case straight through to the part where the calf—and here she indicated Bella—was discovered in the jacked car. He huffed as she finished.

“And it takes four officers to watch her until a guardian can come pick her up?”

She waved her ears in trepidation. “Well, she’s terribly fussy and we’ve just been trying to get her to settle but she’s not really responding to anything and… and, uh…”

Chief Bogo rolled his eyes and held out his hooves. “Give her here.”

Francine’s face turned gray. Well… gray _er_. “It’s okay, Chief, we can handle—”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” His eyes narrowed as his voice lowered to just a hair above dangerous.

She gulped hard… they all did. “Yes, sir.”

Bogo accepted Bella easily from Francine and drew her to his chest with an innate and easy confidence, the kind borne of experience and practice. The pitched cries only slowed as the calf was laid in a new cradle, and she hiccupped and sniffled pitiably in his arms. The officers didn’t dare move, each entertaining the possibility that they might need to retrieve the baby back from him for her own safety if she didn’t quiet down soon.

The Chief tilted his arms outward, putting the little girl at a slight incline and beside his face. The deep creases softened, nostrils flared and— _pffff!_ —blew a little puff of air across her nose. Surprised, Bella stopped immediately, blinked loose two enormous tears, and then stared at the new face with big, brown, doe-y eyes. Another puff made her blink again, now enraptured by this new mammal in front of her, a shape that was a little familiar and very pleasant. The silence was refreshing, a cool pool to ears that had searing noises assaulting them for so long. The officers stared dumbstruck and could do nothing more than watch.

“There, now,” Bogo said with a mild kind of smile as she rubbed her cheeks clumsily. “That wasn’t so hard, hmm?”

Bella reached curious hooves up and he lowered his head a little more, waggled one ear as she made to grab for it, and then the other. She beamed at the game of keep away, and his smile deepened even further. When Bogo thrust his nose forward just under her chin and blew a loud raspberry into her neck, she curled herself around his great snout, giggling with glee.

“Who’s a little sweet pea? Hmm? Who’s the best, bravest girl ever? _You_ are.” He pulled his head back and swept his hoof gently over her forehead. “I know you had a big, scary day, and I don’t blame you for being upset. You’re safe here. Chief’s Honor.” He booped her nose and she giggled again. “Chin up, alright?”

At this point, the other officers were exchanging slightly stupefied glances with one another, faces that wordlessly wondered, _“What the hell is going on?”_ They were caught completely off-guard when Bella grabbed hold of Bogo’s wrist and— _Om nom nom nom—_ started gnawing on his hoof. They all jerked, as though waking from a falling dream, and leapt forward in sheer terror… only to stop dead at the sound of the resounding, genuine laughter coming from the Chief.

“So strong!” He chuckled as she continued to gum on the hard hoof, gurgles and giggles accompanying the sounds of her suckling. Shining lines of drool dripped from her mouth and onto his sleeve. “It’s alright, you won’t hurt me, no you won’t…”

“Oh, God, did you actually do it?” Officer Wolford picked just that moment to hurry back into the offices. He ran straight past Bogo and to the stunned group of officers that he’d spoken with earlier, face awash with relief and ears perked high. “Did you really… manage to…?”

They said nothing as he stopped in front of them, only pointed back behind him at the Chief. His words trailed off as he regarded the sight of the previously inconsolable calf chomping on his boss’s hoof, and Bogo laughed again.

“How many of my officers did you have running scared, little one?” he asked Bella with a leftover snicker. “Maybe you’ll join them someday, show them how it’s done, hmm?”

She responded with a burbling coo and slowly closing eyelids. After another few seconds they shut completely and little Bella fell asleep mid-nom.

“Teething is the worst,” Bogo said, and drew his hoof back carefully. His voice had assumed some of its usual tone as he was now at least partially addressing his subordinates again. He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and halfway cleaned off his saliva-covered hoof, then held it out expectantly. “Bag.”

Francine hurried forward and slipped the handle loop of the diaper bag over his outstretched hoof.

“Since you’re all clearly out of your depth with this, I’ll take it from here.” He gripped the bag firmly and turned toward the doorway. “Carry on.”

He left them all standing dumbly among the desks, moving with slow and careful steps to keep from jostling the now sleeping calf. It was nearly a full minute after he had left the room before any of them found the voice to speak.

Wolford pointed a weak finger at the doorway. “Did that just—?”

“Yeah,” Francine confirmed with a dull nod.

“Did he just—?”

“Uh huh,” Nick added eloquently.

Nadine put a paw to her head and shook it hard. “Did anyone else just take, like, thirty points of psychic damage?”

“Fifty,” Judy and Nick said in unison.

Wolford flattened his ears and tucked his tail. “No one’s ever going to believe us.”

“Hell, even _I_ don’t believe us, and I was standing right here,” Nick said. He turned toward his coworkers completely and put his paw in front of him, face tight and serious. “So, are we agreed to just enter a Keep Mum Pact Alpha with added Memory Denial for good measure and never speak of this again?”

Each of them nodded and added their own paws atop his; Francine wrapped them all in her trunk. They shook once, and then broke. Pact made, they all left the circle in silence to return to their day’s work, itching to reset their minds within a frame of normalcy once more and begin forgetting what they’d just witnessed as soon as possible.

*****

When Chief Bogo sat himself back at his desk, he knew that his productivity for the day was shot; he didn’t even attempt to return to the mountain of paperwork still set out for his signature. Little Bella had found her thumb and was sucking on it as she slept; sometime during the walk back to his office she had turned into his chest and was snuggled against his shirt. He reached carefully into the diaper bag he set between his feet, found a blanket, and draped it over her as he leaned far back in his chair with a sigh.

He hated when they cried. It was something he didn’t miss from his days of being out on the beat. Draping heavy blankets over trembling shoulders, murmuring meaningless comfort words to ease their pain, their sorrow, their fear. Watching as the young—the babies, the toddlers, the children—had their joy, their loved ones, their homes stripped from them in a number of horrific and deplorable ways. Bogo learned quickly the tricks to distract, to redirect, to give hope… to make that sound stop. Bella was lucky she could return home whole and healthy; she was so young she wouldn’t even be burdened with the memory of this day like her mother would. Her mother would see her child again, hold her in her arms. A happy ending.

It wasn’t very often he got to bear witness to happy endings; it was nice to know that they still existed.

<Chief Bogo, sir?>

The sound of Officer Clawhauser’s voice on his intercom usually didn’t sound so jarringly loud, but at that moment his words may as well have been spoken through a bullhorn. He dropped his eyes to the sleeping calf, but she only buried her face a little more against his chest. He reached back, lowered the volume as far as it would go, and hit the button.

“What is it?” he hissed, his words made almost entirely of air.

<The little girl’s mother is here.>

“Oh.” Bogo took as deep a breath as he dared and let it out slowly. “Thank you, Clawhauser. Bring her to my office, please.”

<Yes, sir.>

A pause and he hit the button again. “Clawhauser.”

<Chief?>

“When you get back, have McHorn set that carjacker up in the second interview room for a little… chat.”

<… yes, sir. I will.>

“Good.”

Chief Bogo brought his arm back from his desk and settled it protectively over the little calf he held as the lines of his face tightened once more into the chiseled grimace he wore to his station daily. This was the face that the villains saw, dreaded, cowered before… and so too would another one, shortly.

He hated watching children cry, yes… but making criminals shed a few tears was a different story entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> And I was _this close_ to making it angst-free, too. -_-;;
> 
> Oh well. I hope you enjoyed it, all the same. Thank you for reading!


End file.
